If we are to believe the proponents of the Theory of Practice and of Rational Choice, the gap between these two paradigmatic approaches cannot be bridged. They rely on ontological premises, theories of motivations and causal models that stand too far apart. In this article, I argue that this theoretical antinomy loses much of its edge when we take as objects of sociological investigation processes of historical change, that is, when we try to specify in theoretical terms how and in (...) which conditions historical actors enact and endorse shifts in patterns of relations as well as shifts in the symbolic and cognitive categories that make these relations significant. I substantiate this argument in light of the distinction between two temporalities of historical change: first, the long waves of gradual change and, second, the short waves of moments of breaks and ruptures. Along the way, I develop an argument about the conditions of emergence of self-limiting norms and the centrality of epistemic beliefs in situations of high disruption. (shrink)

Pogge and Wenar have recently argued that we are responsible for the persistence of the so-called ‘resource curse’. But their analyses are limited in important ways. I trace these limitations to their undue focus on the ways in which the international rules governing resource transactions undermine government accountability. To overcome the shortcomings of Pogge’s and Wenar’s analyses, I propose a normative framework organized around the social value of government responsiveness and discuss the implications of adopting this framework for future normative (...) assessment of the resource curse and our relationships to it. (shrink)

This article disputes the common view that social science explanations depend on discovery of lawlike generalizations from which descriptions of social outcomes can be derived. It distinguishes between governing and phenomenal regularities, and argues that social regularities are phenomenal rather than governing. In place of nomological deductive arguments, the article maintains that social explanations depend on the discovery of causal mechanisms underlying various social processes. The metaphysical correlate of this argument is that there are no social kinds: types of social (...) entities that share a common casual constitution giving rise to strong regularities of behavior. The article turns next to a consideration of the character of social causation and argues for a microfoundational interpretation of social causation: social causal powers are embodied in the constraints and opportunities that institutions present to individual agents. Finally, it is noted that these arguments have consequences for the credibility of social predictions: it is argued that predictions in social science are generally unreliable. (shrink)

Scientific progress has many facets and can be conceptualized in different ways, for example in terms of problem-solving, of truthlikeness or of growth of knowledge. The main claim of the paper is that the most important prerequisite of scientific progress is the institutionalization of competition and criticism. An institutional framework appropriately channeling competition and criticism is the crucial factor determining the direction and rate of scientific progress, independently on how one might wish to conceptualize scientific progress itself. The main intention (...) is to narrow the divide between traditional philosophy of science and the sociological, economic and political outlook at science that emphasizes the private interests motivating scientists and the subsequent contingent nature of the enterprise. The aim is to show that although science is a social enterprise taking place in historical time and thus is of a contingent nature, it can and in fact does lead to genuine scientific progress - contrary to the claims of certain sociologists of science and other relativists who standardly stress its social nature, but deny its progressive character. I will first deal with the factual issue by way of introducing the main concepts and mechanisms of modern institutional theory and by applying them to the analysis of the cultural phenomenon that we call modern science. I will then turn to the normative issue: what is the appropriate content of the institutional framework, for scientific progress to emerge and be sustained at which level should it be set and by whom? Addressing this problematic is equivalent to conducting a constitutional debate leading to a Constitution of Science. (shrink)

This paper articulates and defends three interconnected claims: first, that the debate on the role of values for science misses a crucial dimension, the institutional one; second, that institutions occupy the intermediate level between scientific activities and values and that they are to be systematically integrated into the analysis; third, that the appraisal of the institutions of science with respect to values should be undertaken within the premises of a comparative approach rather than an ideal approach. Hence, I defend the (...) view that the issue be framed in reference to the following question: "What kind of institutional rules should be in place in order for the scientific process to unfold in such a way that the values that we deem more important come to the fore?" Addressing this concern is equivalent to conducting a debate on institutions and their role for science. (shrink)

In 2011, two Chinese municipalities, Chongqing and Shanghai, enacted a property tax on rich homeowners. However, the two municipal governments sharply diverged in their designs of the tax and the justifying frames used. Whereas Chongqing explicitly framed the tax as a redistributive measure targeting the economic elite, Shanghai framed it as an ad hoc technical intervention in the housing market that would antagonize no one. This article explains how the only two Chinese cities that introduced this unconventional tax ended up (...) enacting the tax in such different ways. In doing so, this article proposes a theoretical framework synthesizing two main pillars of Bourdieu’s state theory – a conceptualization of the state as a field of competition, and a careful consideration of the symbolic dimension of state power. The political competition in which the top leaders of the two municipalities were engaged drove them to enact the tax. The positions these leaders occupied in the field of competition shaped their specific strategies of accumulating competition-specific capital, getting their capital noted and recognized by other players in the field, and theatricalizing their capital-seeking acts as serving some universal interest. These dynamics gave rise to divergent styles of enacting the tax. (shrink)

The present yearbook (which is the fourth in the series) is subtitled Trends & Cycles. It is devoted to cyclical and trend dynamics in society and nature; special attention is paid to economic and demographic aspects, in particular to the mathematical modeling of the Malthusian and post-Malthusian traps' dynamics. An increasingly important role is played by new directions in historical research that study long-term dynamic processes and quantitative changes. This kind of history can hardly develop without the application of mathematical (...) methods. There is a tendency to study history as a system of various processes, within which one can detect waves and cycles of different lengths – from a few years to several centuries, or even millennia. The contributions to this yearbook present a qualitative and quantitative analysis of global historical, political, economic and demographic processes, as well as their mathematical models. This issue of the yearbook consists of three main sections: (I) Long-Term Trends in Nature and Society; (II) Cyclical Processes in Pre-industrial Societies; (III) Contemporary History and Processes. We hope that this issue of the yearbook will be interesting and useful both for historians and mathematicians, as well as for all those dealing with various social and natural sciences. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel competition criterion for evaluating institutional schemes. Roughly, this criterion says that one institutional scheme is normatively superior to another to the extent that the former would engender more widespread political competition than the latter. I show that this criterion should be endorsed by both global egalitarians and their statist rivals, as it follows from their common commitment to the moral equality of all persons. I illustrate the normative import of the competition criterion by exploring its (...) potential implications for the scope of egalitarian principles of distributive justice. In particular, I highlight the challenges it raises for global egalitarians' efforts to justify extending the scope of egalitarian justice beyond the state. (shrink)

This article explores the possibility of resistance under conditions of extreme state power in liberal democracies. It examines the strategies of migrants without legal status who, when threatened with one of the most awesome powers of the liberal state—expulsion—shed their legal identity in order to escape the state’s reach. Remarkably, in doing so, they often succeed in preventing the state from exercising its sovereign powers. The article argues that liberal states are uniquely constrained in their dealing with undocumented migrants. Not (...) only are they forced to operate within the constraints of the international legal order—making repatriation contingent on the possession of identity documents—but the liberal state is also constitutionally limited in its exercise of coercion against the individual. The article concludes that it is those individuals who have the weakest claims against the liberal state that are most able to constrain its exercise of sovereignty. (shrink)

In this article, we provide a broad overview of the interplay among cognition, belief systems, and institutions, and how they affect economic performance. We argue that a deeper understanding of institutions’ emergence, their working properties, and their effect on economic and political outcomes should begin from an analysis of cognitive processes. We explore the nature of individual and collective learning, stressing that the issue is not whether agents are perfectly or boundedly rational, but rather how human beings actually reason and (...) choose, individually and in collective settings. We then tie the processes of learning to institutional analysis, providing arguments in favor of what can be characterized as “cognitive institutionalism.” Besides, we show that a full treatment of the phenomenon of path dependence should start at the cognitive level, proceed at the institutional level, and culminate at the economic level. (shrink)

The dominant “harmonious” notion of a social institution used by Searle in the discussion of social facts is critically reconsidered. It is argued that an essential ingredient is missing from this notion, namely the harming feature of power. The harmonious view treats power as an important part of social institutions, but takes into account only its beneficial side. This led to a thoroughly positive notion of social institutions which makes us blind to the harm they inflict, the duality of those (...) who benefit from exerting power and those who suffer from the power being exerted upon them, and the asymmetry between leading groups and those which “are lead”. It turns out that Searle's notion of social facts is robust and compatible with a more adequate notion of social institutions emerging from the investigation. (shrink)

This article provides a critical introduction to an issue fo Ratio Juris concerend with two contrasting schools of legal idealism: the so-called Sheffield School (Beyleveld, Brownsword and colleagues) and the “discourse ethics” school of Habermas and Alexy. The article focusses on four issues: (1) whether a "claim to correctness" is a necessary feature of law, (2) the connection between correctness and validity, (3) Alexy's argument for a "qualifying connection" between law and morality, and its counterpart in the Sheffield School's approach, (...) and (4) Alexy's case for the "Radbruch formula": that "extreme injustice is not law”. While rejecting both versions of the case for legal idealism, I argue that both schools offer vaulable, and broadly similar, insights into what makes a legal system morally legitimate. (shrink)

Intermediaries are social agents who can be found in all types of different environments, cultures, and organizations. More often than enough, intermediaries are middlepersons between two power centers, yet their agency is precarious due to their position as brokers who gain from bridging otherwise unconnected parties, or marginalized vulnerable individuals who suffer from the invasion of the neighboring power holders. How can these two different perspectives of the intermediaries be reconciled? Under what conditions do they shift from one type of (...) agency to another? Previous scholarship attributes the agency of intermediaries to static positionality. This paper treats the position of the intermediary as an opportunity structure, which is shaped by multi-level relational dynamics. We show the changing agency of three intermediary tribal groups (i.e. the Tibetans in northwestern China, Uriyangqad Mongols, and Jurchens) who were situated between the sedentary Chinese and nomadic Mongols during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) through a systematic study with horse trade data. The group-based and officially-regulated horse trade constituted the most important linkage between the intermediaries and these two power centers. We study the changes in the dynamics of their contact during trade, and explain why these intermediaries became client, client to two patrons, and broker in their trade with the Chinese and Mongols in different eras. We argue that the position of the intermediaries did not provide definite advantages for their exploitation, nor did it paralyze them with any concrete disadvantages. Rather, their position offered them unpredictable opportunities that arose from their relational dynamics with the power centers. Moreover, the self-serving and local interests of the intermediaries, and the strategies and tactics that they used, determined their capacity to respond to emerging and unpredictable opportunities and capitalize on them. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:How does the state influence stakeholder legitimacy? And how does this process affect an industry’s ethical challenges? Stakeholder theory adopts a forward-looking perspective and seeks to understand how managers can address stakeholders’ claims to improve the firm’s ability to create value. Yet, existing work does not adequately address the role of the state in defining the stakeholder universe nor the implications this may have for subsequent ethical challenges managers face. This article develops a political stakeholder theory (political ST) by weaving (...) together the political economy, stakeholder theory, and legitimacy literatures. Political ST shows how state policies influence stakeholder legitimacy and, in turn, affect an industry’s ethical challenges. This article integrates the concept of agonism to address the perennial tension between markets and states and its implications for firms and their managers. Political ST is then applied to the case of microfinance, followed by a discussion of the contributions of this approach. (shrink)

This article explores the relation between the expulsion of Jews from medieval England and France and state building, geo-politics, regime styles, and taxation in these countries. Jews were evicted as a result of attempts by kings to manage royal insecurity, refashion relations between state and society, and build more durable systems of taxation within the territories they claimed as theirs. As they engaged in state building and extended their ties, often conflictual, to key societal and political actors, Jews became financially (...) less important but more visible as outsiders, becoming a liability for the crown. Similar mechanisms were at work despite important differences distinguishing England’s growing regime of rights and representation and France’s emergent absolutist patrimonialism. (shrink)

This manuscript proposes that tax avoidance can be better understood and mitigated as a sustainability problem. Tax avoidance is not just a financial problem for tax authorities, but one that erodes critical common spaces necessary for the smooth functioning of regulatory compliance, organizational integrity, and society. Defining tax avoidance as a sustainability problem offers a broader and more holistic understanding of the organizational and societal consequences of tax avoidance behavior. Sustainability is also a mature and legitimized concept that can readily (...) incorporate taxation. A variety of established sustainability metrics have the capacity to incorporate anti-tax avoidance measures or publicize firms that engage in fair tax practices. This manuscript concludes that integrating sustainability principles, in conjunction with important extant work on corporate social responsibility and taxation, can advance the goals of decreasing the occurrence and acceptability of tax avoidance. (shrink)

As rational choice theory has moved from economics into political science and sociology, it has been dramatically transformed. The intellectual diffusion of agency theory illustrates this process. Agency theory is a general model of social relations involving the delegation of authority, and generally resulting in problems of control, which has been applied to a broad range of substantive contexts. This paper analyzes applications of agency theory to state policy implementation in economics, political science, and sociology. After documenting variations in the (...) theory across disciplinary contexts, the strengths and weaknesses of these different varieties of agency theory are assessed. Sociological versions of agency theory, incorporating both broader microfoundations and richer models of social structure, are in many respects the most promising. This type of agency theory illustrates the potential of an emerging sociological version of rational choice theory. (shrink)

Tax administrators are empowered by the state to secure compliance with tax obligations. Enforcing compliance on the ground is complex, and street-level administrators often engage in the “art of the possible,” leading to dilemmas in the field. This paper examines tax administrators’ practices with regard to Jamaican property tax defaulters with outstanding tax liabilities in excess of 3 years. Drawing on interviews with tax administrators and other key agents, we find that tax administrators reposition themselves from objective enforcers to empathizing (...) officials engaging in schemes of action, doing what they can do rather than what they should do. This is a practical-sense approach to securing compliance. We identify two forms of empathy, assimilated and cynical, and conclude that administrators’ empathetic identification with defaulters does not necessarily arise solely from concern for social cohesion, or inter-subjective compassion, but also sometimes from self-interest. (shrink)

This book consists of a dialogue between two interlocutors, Pablo and a student, who discuss a great range of issues in social philosophy and political theory, and in particular, the emergence, working properties and economic effects of institutions. It uses the dialogical form to make philosophy more accessible, but also to show how ideas develop through intellectual interaction. The fact that one of the interlocutors is the "student" in a place in the real world makes the dialogue quasi-fictive in character (...) and enables the active engagement of the reader. After all, we are all philosophers and we develop our own philosophy by exchanging views and arguments. The dialogue form is and should remain the principal form of philosophizing, since ideas, like butterflies, do not merely exist – they develop. This is certainly the case in actual philosophical interaction, and it can be the case in written philosophical exposition. Although the dialogue does not presuppose prior acquaintance with the respective philosophical and social scientific literature under discussion in this book, it makes arguments more accessible, and conveys the feeling that there are no definite solutions to philosophical problems. (shrink)